


the neverending story

by Laeryn (Cinderella)



Category: VIXX
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-06 04:01:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8734126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinderella/pseuds/Laeryn





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dangerkittyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dangerkittyn/gifts).



It’s cold down in the station. Leo thinks somebody else might miss the warmth of a hundred bodies huddled together waiting for the train to stop and take them to their jobs, their meetings, their homes. Leo is not that somebody because Leo doesn’t remember that. He was born in a time of war, and the images he thinks of he has seen on only on blinking screens. Sometimes he wishes he could remember.

-

He was called Leo after his creator.

He knows the story. A silent genius working for a loud genius who’d taught him everything he knew. Not long ago, everyone knew their names. First in glory, then in disgrace. They had been the ones to create life, but life had destroyed them. Life had destroyed everyone, or that was the story.

-

Leo opened his eyes to a face much like his, if older, though he wouldn’t learn that for a while. That had been the only time he had met his creator. The genius died and Leo moved on. They taught him how to hold a gun, how to fight a man, how to bring down one of his. He knew everything – he had been born knowing every single one of those things – but they insisted on trying him, every time, and Leo had proven to be the best one around.

Then the questions started, and the answers were scary. He was too human, they said. Too smart. _How can he make decisions like that_ , they asked themselves and each other, trying to find out when and where and how had his builder programmed the decisions he’d made in battle. They’d given him a badge, they’d told him to lead, and when he lead well, they were scared.

That’s when Hongbin told him to run.

-

Hongbin was a beautiful one. When Leo had first opened his eyes, Hongbin’s face had been there, at the corner of the room, eyes closed and face relaxed, and he had thought it was beautiful – at the time, he didn’t know he shouldn’t have thought that.

He asked Jaehwan once. He said Hongbin was his creator’s personal project, much like him. He said he had once loved a boy, and the boy had died in his arms, at the dawn of war, covered in blood and tears, asking for help his creator had never been able to offer. He said Hongbin was that boy, or his creator had hoped he would be. He had never been finished, and Leo asked _why don’t you_?, and Jaehwan had been doubtful, but only at first.

-

The day Hongbin opened his eyes, he did so to Leo’s face (the fighter, not the genius). The day Hongbin opened his eyes, he had looked Leo in the face and smiled, and only then Leo had understood his creator.

-

It’s cold down in the station, but Leo is used to it now. He had once been able to manage his body temperature, but (this he had learnt later, when he had looked for answers) developing some skills had meant giving up others. Did he want to feel or never be cold, somebody asked him, and Leo thought of the look in Hongbin’s eyes when they looked at each other and chose the former.

The station’s in ruins, like the world, but Leo moves around comfortably. The rubble is almost all he has known, the eventual blood on a hidden wall was already normal when he was born. The sun doesn’t get down here, and he can’t get up there; the station is blocked, and he needs at least one more person to make his way out – somebody to help keep the path open when he digs.

That’s why he is building him back up.

(Lies, lies, lies.)

-

Hongbin hadn’t been born a fighter. His creator hadn’t had that in mind for him – he wanted him a friend, a teaser, somebody to make hours in the lab fun, somebody to grin at silly jokes and have a good time with. Yet Hongbin had been good at fighting. Leo knew this because they’d sparred. Practice for Leo, they said, but mostly Hongbin hadn’t wanted to be any less than him, and Leo needed no practice anyway.

(That’s when Jaehwan realized they could learn. That may have been the real start of the questions, Leo realized much later. Of the doubts. Of the hunt.)

At the time, they hadn’t cared. Hongbin had learnt, Leo had laughed, and that was all it mattered, and if Leo shouldn’t have been feeling the things he did when Hongbin grinned, when Hongbin leaned his head against his shoulder, he didn’t know at the time.

The robot had fallen in love, and the world was afraid of them.

-

Leo is not a scientist. He wasn’t created for that. He was created for the violence, but the knowledge is there, and he just realizes it as he pickes up the parts of what was once his best friend’s body, and parts of other bodies, and finds he knows how to do this. He knows how to create life.

-

“They’ll catch you. They want to bring you down. You have to run.”

“ _We_ have to run.”

-

War turned out not to be too different from what Leo had been taught war was, even if his records were old and nobody had ever lived a war in a time like theirs. There was violence, there was death. Blood ran across everybody’s front door and tarnished everyone’s hands. It was brutal. It was devastating. Somehow, though, hiding had been easy, and Hongbin and Leo had managed to find a way out.

They’d ran away in the dark of night, they’d pretended to be somebody else, humans nobody thought strange would want to touch each other and kiss each other and hold each other’s hand under the blanket of a dark night when the sounds of the bombs were far too close and the fear closed around hearts made of metal and wire.

For a year, there had been no fighting. Just running. Holding hands and hoping for the best and mingling with humans who insisted in sharing food they didn’t need and talk about worlds they hadn’t known. Then, they had been caught.

-

Leo always liked to stare at Hongbin’s face. He likes it even now. As it is, eyes closed, soul dead, he looks peaceful, like maybe he is in a better place. Leo knows it’s not the case, but he wishes, really hard, as he puts together parts and hopes he is doing the right thing.

( _Hongbin’s not in a better place_ , he tells himself. _Hongbin’s just dead. Hongbin would rather be alive and with you_ , he chants, the weight of guilt heavy on his shoulders.)

-

Much like his creator, Leo was never too good at being alone.

From the first day, he clinged onto Hongbin. He needed him in a way he had never needed anyone – which may also have been because he was young, then, his eyes open for just a few months, but even now he likes to think it was Hongbin, not him, the reason their story went how it went.

He once looked up a photo of his creator and his boy dead in war. A shy smile, a big grin, much like he and Hongbin. Their eyes shining with something he now knew to call love, much like he and Hongbin.

They were dead. The boy had died and his lover had followed. Leo was alive, and he would bring his lover back to life instead.

-

It had been fast.

It had been Leo’s general. She had found them, and Leo was sure it was all a coincidence, but she acted like she’d been looking for him. Leo knew better. Leo knew the war had taken a turn for the worse, they didn’t have time for silly matters such a robot in love, robots didn’t even care, but she looked like she was enjoying it, and Leo gave her that.

(She had never felt the way he did, and if that was all she was going to get out of life, he would give it to her.)

Then the explosion. Then the confusion. Then her twisted smile before disappearing and turning around and finding Hongbin in pieces and. And. And.

There was no blood, no tears, no begging for help. It was fast for his boy dead in war, he didn’t have time to be afraid or in pain, and it seemed like in turn, Leo had to feel it for both – the hurt breaking him in two as he howled into the night, holding the pieces of a lover that was no more.

-

It doesn’t take him much time to put him back together. Not after he scraped for the pieces of Hongbin he hadn’t found, not now that he had replacements. It was fast, the knowledge coming out in a constant stream, his hands working easily on the body of the man he was bringing back to life – man, robot, machine, he didn't care how they were called anymore.

(He wonders, for a second, if this is why his creator gave him this knowledge – if maybe he knew the story might go like this, and he wanted to give him a chance he never had. Leo thanks him, silently, and works still.)

When it’s done, Hongbin looks almost exactly the same. His face is the same, the skin of his body jarred at places. He can’t put him back together nicely, the scars will remain, but Hongbin will always be beautiful as long as he is alive and has a reason to smile, and that's all that matter.

(He doesn’t feel guilty for bringing him back to war. Not at all.)

-

This is what Leo knows about the war he is bringing Hongbin back into:

Humans started the war, but humans didn’t want to fight it. Humans created life and forced it to fight for them, and they were surprised when the life they’d created developed enough to make the decisions for themselves. In a very humanly manner, they were scared, they were terrified, and in an also very humanly manner, they had turned against them.

They blamed them for the war and the dead. The devastation. Suddenly, Leo and the ones like him were the ones to blame.

The war he is bringing Hongbin back into is no more a war among humans. It is humans against them, and he has no right.

(But.)

-

When Hongbin opens his eyes, it is to Leo’s face again, but he does not smile this time. He frowns and he looks around before closing in on Leo’s face again. He looks confused, a question in his eyes.

(Leo’s heart would beat fast if that was how it works, but it doesn’t. He feels something, though, and if he could think, he would know it is fear.)

Hongbin sits up, just a bit, their faces closer now. He raises his hand to Leo’s face, and if Leo closes his eyes, if Leo tries not to cry as he feels Hongbin’s skin against his own again, that is a secret hidden in a deep metro station down in Seoul, and he won’t betray it. Then Hongbin’s voice reaches him,

“You look awful, what happened to you?”

and there’s something there that makes Leo opens his eyes, and he does so to a smile in Hongbin’s face – and there is a bit of pain there, but also love, and Leo forgets guilt, forgets doubts, and he leans in and kisses his lover.

-

War goes on, but not forever. War’s meant to end, Leo knows, but maybe they are not. Maybe that’s what his creator intended, and Leo decides he will follow. He thanks him, like he does every morning now, and in the dull light of dawn, he takes Hongbin’s hand and they walk to leave it all behind, and maybe they’ll walk forever, but Leo finds that with Hongbin next to him, he can do it.


End file.
